


she sells sanctuary

by ghoulfern



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Past Memories, Post-War, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-08-03 10:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16324316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulfern/pseuds/ghoulfern
Summary: She hasn’t thought of him since the end of the war.  The last time she’d seen him had been at his hearing, five months past.  She hadn’t testified, but still, she had sat there and watched, had seen Draco in his cage, shivering in prison rags.  He’d looked right at her, found her, somehow, through the crowd, and his eyes had held something. Infinite somethings, but the biggest one had looked almost like an apology.  The rest, she could not uncover.





	1. embers

Hermione walks through Diagon Alley and the snow is glowing around her, calm and quiet and muffling.  She stumbles under the weight of the existence she’s been so carelessly gifted, and she peeks behind her, every so often, to see the footprints she leaves behind, to confirm, perhaps, that she is real, even if sometimes (most of the time) she certainly does not feel that way.  Disassociation.  Harry, in his unhealthy and wholly misinformed way, often says that pinching yourself works wonders.  _Pinching_ , as if she can wake herself up, as if it’s a dream and suddenly, just by taking her skin and squeezing it between thumb and forefinger, she can return to her body, make her home there again, feel for the first time since the war, for the first time since she’d started running with her _golden boys_ , that she belongs in her skin.  Harry’s idea of coping has always been flawed, but this, this is almost insulting to her. 

This detachment, it feels like an electrified sort of static aching, resting just at the nape of her neck and radiating constantly outward and downward and all over her body in white-hot tendrils: the raw pain that has been left with her, that has followed her for years and only just now sunk its teeth deep into her.  As she walks against the chill and tries to remember why she’s come out here in the first place, she yanks down her jacket sleeve into her left hand, holds it securely there, but she can feel the scars still burning from beneath the fabric, as if freshly carved. 

It has been six months.  Six months of no reprieve, of camera flashes through store windows, of avoiding her stark reflection in the mirror.  One month, since she’s moved out of the Burrow and tucked herself away into an unimposing, perfectly boring flat in Diagon.  Hiding, if she can even wager to call it that. 

Hermione doesn’t know where she’s headed until it’s looming over her, familiar and grimy: The Leaky Cauldron.  She hesitates at the door, her hand shaky as it reaches for the handle.  The cruel winter winds whip her scarf about like a particularly angry poltergeist and her eyes are so, _so_ dry, but she cannot bring herself to yank the door open.  She’s shoved her hair away into a messy bun and her eyes are rimmed with perfectly-un-Hermione-Granger exhaustion and darkness, but she has no doubt someone will recognize her past it, anyway.  No doubt in her mind that someone will spot her coming through the door, hop up from their seat, crowd her and insist on shaking her hand, thanking her.  _Thanking her_.  For what?  What is she left with?  The thought is selfish, she knows, it’s so daft and empty and mean to think that her suffering is worth more than the safety of the whole world.  But she can’t quite bring herself to care about it, not now. 

With a sigh and a deep reluctance that could rival even Ron’s most stubborn moments, she wrenches the door open.  A blast of warm air welcomes her.  She steps inside.

“Ms. Granger,” Tom greets from the bar, and he seems utterly delighted to see her there.  Shame all she can manage to do is smile sheepishly.  It does not reach her eyes.  Hasn’t in quite some time. 

“Tom,” she replies politely, and braces herself for the inevitable.  But no one is coming up to her, tugging on her jacket or crying her name from a booth.  In fact, the pub is startlingly silent.  She peers around, finding very quickly that she, aside from a hooded stranger in the corner, is the only one here.  Her eyes linger on the figure for just a moment before she turns her attention back to Tom.  He’s leaning toward her, patiently waiting with his friendly smile for her to return to herself long enough to do something other than stand in the middle of the pub, blankly looking around.  She approaches the bar, hops up onto a stool.  “Business seems to be booming,” she offers drily, and Tom’s grin only widens. 

“Late, you know,” he says.  She realizes she does not know the time.  It could be two in the morning.  Tom must read her mind, because he says, in quieter intonations, as if telling someone they have toilet paper stuck to the bottom of their shoe, “it’s just after midnight, Ms. Granger.”

“Oh,” she replies, and her voice is hollow.  She’d woken up from sleeping, having gone to bed at three in the afternoon, and come straight to the Leaky, as if on an instinct that no one would be here.  Well, nearly no one.  She finds herself stealing a glance, now, toward the stranger in the back corner.  “Who’s that?” she whispers, looking to Tom.

Tom’s smile, finally, falters, and he ducks away from her to fiddle with something on a shelf.  “I’m not meant to say,” he mutters.  He produces a rag from somewhere and turns back to her, only to continue avoiding her eye as he scrubs down the bar.  She’s fairly certain that the rag is not even properly damp enough to clean anything, but she doesn’t remark on it.  Instead, she shrugs. 

“Alright.  Firewhisky, then, please.”

Tom looks relieved to have something to do with himself that is more meaningful than pretending to clean, and he shuffles away.  Hermione permits herself to look across the pub again, and the hooded figure now seems to be staring straight at her.  She can’t spot a face beneath the shadows and, for a moment, she thinks it may be that a literal Dementor is having a drink at the local pub, but then she blinks, and it’s clear that whoever is underneath the cloak is scrawny and entirely human.  She can see their pale hands, but she still shudders. 

“Here ya’ are.” Tom’s back with her drink, sliding it in front of her.  She reaches automatically toward her bag for the money, but Tom holds up a hand.  “On the house, aye?” She doesn’t have time to respond, to deny it, to beg him to just _please_ take her bloody money, because he’s already sidling out from behind the bar and toddling over to the figure in the corner.  Hermione’s eyes follow.  Tom leans down, whispers something, and the figure shakes their head.  Once Tom has walked away, the figure turns to gaze out the window.

Hermione shouldn’t be suspicious; Voldemort is dead.  She’s seen it herself, dreamt about it.  The moment is painted onto the backs of her eyelids, much like many other, less pleasant memories.  But she can’t pretend that she hasn’t heard rumor of angry supporters.  They still exist, out there, even if in smaller numbers.  She lifts the Firewhisky to her lips and takes a long sip, relishing the burn as it runs down her throat.  It introduces a little bit of life into her, wakes her up just a fraction.  She feels stupid for going out to get drunk when she has a perfectly capable bottle of Muggle whiskey by her bedside that she uses to get to sleep, something to help skip the parts of her memory that kept her awake.  But going out, that helped, didn’t it?  Wasn’t Harry always telling her to go out?

She stays sitting there in the Leaky for a while, long enough that she gets three Firewhiskys in and Tom suggests that she stop.  Her head is fuzzy, and her thoughts are soft, bordering for once on harmless, trivial.  She misses Harry and Ron, she misses Ginny.  She misses the bloody castle, she misses Peeves.  She misses the _library_.  She misses the small vestiges of normalcy that have altogether left her. 

Perhaps she should fire call someone.  Perhaps she’ll go home right now and try.  She gets up from her stool, stumbling a little when her feet hit the floor.  The zippy brightness of Firewhisky seems steeped into every part of her body, spreading warmth to her fingers and the very tops of her ears.  “Alright to get home?” comes Tom’s distant voice, and she turns, fixes him with a smile so genuine it could very well look insane. 

“I’m just fine, don’t you worry,” she says.  She’s about to leave, when she spots the figure again.  She’s nearly forgotten.  And they seem to be looking directly at her again.  “Do me a favor, Tom,” she says quietly, glancing toward the barkeep.  “Send that bloke a Butterbeer on me.” She produces a Galleon from her pocket and slaps it onto the counter. “Tell him he looks creepy.” 

She leaves, and the warmth stays behind.  When she gets home, she falls right into bed and drifts back to sleep, as if she’d never left at all.

* * *

 

Hermione Flooes Harry the next afternoon. 

“There aren’t any more Death Eaters, right?” she asks as soon as his head pops out of the ashes.  She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, a mug of tea balanced in her hands.  “Besides the Malfoys.”

Harry blinks up at her, looking vaguely affronted.  “Nice to see you too, ‘Mione.  Oh, me?  I’m doing just _fine,_ ‘Mione, how are you?”

“Just _answer me_ , harry,” she says, almost pleadingly, and his eyebrows shoot up in something like surprise.  He clears his throat and pushes his hair out of his face, only for it to fall right back to the exact same spot.  He looks sleepless, too, but then, he’s also not been isolating himself far away from friends, so he’s still probably doing better than she is.  She shakes the thought out of her brain, though, because it’s cruel, and he’s _died_ , and he _killed_ Voldemort, of course he’s not—

“Uh… yeah, just the Malfoys.” Harry frowns, and Hermione can tell she’s set him off. There’s a scuffle of movement and he’s looking away, as if he’s already pulling on his shoes.  “Hermione, are you alright?  D’you need me to come over?” _Merlin_.

“No, no, that’s not… _no_ , Harry,” she says quickly, holding up her hands.  He stills, looks back toward her, his eyes wide and frantic, and she feels stupid for even calling him about this in the first place, for making him panic.  Of course there aren’t any Death Eaters left and she, of all people, knew that.  This was a Ron question, if anything else.  She sighs.  “I just saw some weirdo in a pub, is all, brought back memories.  Spooked me.”

Harry seems to relax.  “Your paranoia is getting the better of you again, ‘Mione. You should come visit the Burrow soon, okay?  Ginny misses you, Ron too.” He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, gives her a meaningful look. “ _I_ miss you.”

“I know,” she says.  The guilt has come back to gnaw on her, and she needs to end this before it gets too bad.  “Maybe soon, okay?” He nods, and she ends the call, but it’s too late.  The guilt devours her whole. 

* * *

 

Hermione returns to the pub the next night and Tom greets her from the bar with a relaxed familiarity, as if she’s been visiting for a week straight already and the novelty has worn off.  He’s sitting on a stool, marking something down in a ledger and humming tunelessly.  Her eyes automatically look to the corner, and there’s the stranger, in the same spot.  They lift a hand toward her, and it’s strange, like a ghoul saying hello from across a cemetery.  It doesn’t make any sense at the same time that it _does_ , but she waves back, feebly. 

“Welcome,” Tom says.

“You seem tired, Tom,” Hermione greets.  Someone inside her head snorts, and she feels her throat tighten, her jaw lock.  Because she knows, somehow, that it wasn’t her.  The thought jars her, stops her from taking her seat at the bar, and she stands there, frowning.  _Your conversational skills are lacking_ , comes a voice.  She blanches, almost staggers.  It is not _hers_.  It’s Draco Malfoy’s, intrusive as ever and suddenly _there_. 

“As do you,” Tom replies, offering a smile, but she’s feeling hazy and wrong and she can’t return it. 

“Just… Butterbeer for me tonight, Tom,” she says absently, finally lifting herself onto a stool.  She feels very strangely, having just _thought_ something in someone else’s voice, let alone Malfoy’s.  Where had it come from?

She hasn’t thought of him since the end of the war.  The last time she’d seen him had been at his hearing, five months past.  She hadn’t testified—hadn’t needed to, as Harry had convinced the Wizgamot enough on his own, what with his own memories of the Manor—but still, she had sat there and watched, had seen Draco in his cage, shivering in prison rags.  He’d looked right at her, found her, somehow, through the crowd, and his eyes had held something. Infinite somethings, but the biggest one had looked almost like an apology.  The rest, she could not uncover.

This thought, though, seems to harken back even further, to their years at Hogwarts together.  His angry jabs in the corridor, comments spat at her during class.  She’d taken many of his insults and held them quietly inside of herself, let them rip into her teenage vulnerability quite possibly more than he had intended.  And now it’s back, years later?  She can feel a small flare of familiar anger light up inside her stomach.  How dare he?

“Hermione?”

She glances up to see Tom staring at her, her Butterbeer in one of his hands.  He sets it down in front of her.  “Thank you, Tom,” she says stiffly. 

She can feel herself rapidly being re-consumed with obsessive schoolgirl worry, an old habit resurfacing.  Is he nearby?  Up to something?  Had she somehow unconsciously sensed him on her walk here?  Or—she swallows, chances a look over her shoulder.  The dark figure, they’re already watching her, undoubtedly, and when her eyes fall upon them, they don’t look away.  She grimaces, willing herself to turn back around and at least pretend to sip her Butterbeer.  She’s being delusional, returning to prejudices.  That won’t do.  Her shoulders relax, her back loses its tense hunch.  Malfoy cannot be around here, anyway, no, he’d be with mummy and daddy. It’s nonsense to think that he’s anywhere near her.  Memories of Hogwarts remain, though, the roots of familiar imagery stretching out inside her skull. 

Relentless glaring from across the Great Hall and snipes about her hair during class, all so determined she would sometimes almost convince herself it perhaps meant something else, something her mother would often tell her was true about boys: the more they acted like they hated you, the more they liked you.  And how utterly shit that advice was.  And, god, how could she forget punching him in the face?  She could remember how energetic she’d been on the walk back to the common room, how happy she was to have finally, finally avenged herself.  She remembers skipping through the hall with Ron and Harry, remembers them laughing as they trailed behind her.  Where is she now, that girl?

 _Gone_ , Hermione thinks sullenly.  She’d died, left at Bellatrix’s cruel insistence, disappeared into thin air.  She lifts the Butterbeer to her lips and takes a mighty gulp.  She’s exceptionally tired, all of a sudden, more so than usual.  She wants very much to go home and to never leave again. 

Instead, she finds herself very abruptly standing up from her stool and marching over to the hooded stranger’s table, on a sudden, powerful whim to prove herself wrong.  She drops down into the chair opposite, leans her elbows casually against the table.  The figure turns to face her, and she catches the pale eyes she’d expected to see, and her mouth is on fire.  “Oh, take the bloody hood off, would you, Draco?” she says.  “You look ridiculous.”

A soft chuckle escapes from within the darkness.  “This isn’t a fashion statement, Granger.” His voice is hoarse, not polished and sharp as it used to be.  Thin fingers reach up and throw the hood off, and if Hermione wasn’t so sleepy, she may have flinched.  His hair’s grown out a little, hanging loose against his forehead, and his face is a sickly pale color.  The bags underneath his eyes are even worse than hers. 

“You look _awful_ ,” she mutters, frowning at him. 

He fixes her with a heavy-lidded glare.  “Thanks, Granger.  Very kind of you to say.”

“And digging around in someone’s head without permission _isn’t_ rude?” she shoots back. 

He looks momentarily stricken, before his cool composure returns, but she’s already appalled.  She cannot believe her accusation, as good as groping blindly about in total darkness, has turned out to be true.  “Well, it _was_ a bad start to the conversation,” he says, smirking.  “I was just trying to help.”

“Forgive me,” Hermione says, her voice woefully dry.  “My social skills are not as they used to be, believe it or not, but I have no need for your help.”

He says nothing, just watches her, almost curiously.  It’s starting to grate on her, how weak he looks, how held back he seems, how utterly _different_ he is.  She’d come over here, upon reflection, for a fight, and he isn’t giving it to her.  “So, the hood?” She gestures toward him, arches an eyebrow.  “Reliving your third year pranks?  Missed the thrill of knocking someone off their broom with fright?”

Draco’s stare seems to transform, just a touch.  “If you must know,” he says, finally looking away from her.  “I’m hiding.”

Hermione makes a thoughtful sort of noise at the back of her throat.  “What a coincidence,” she murmurs, leaning back in her chair.  “I’m hiding too.  Albeit, not very well.  Clearly.” She smiles.  His eyes seem to flash, and he looks back up to her. 

“I am sorry,” he says quietly. 

And she knows exactly what he means.  Sorry for the war.  Sorry for _Mudblood_.  Sorry for all of it.  Her arm itches, suddenly, and she reaches into her jacket sleeve to brush her fingers against the jagged scars, almost surprised to feel them there. 

“Do you make a habit of digging around in other people’s heads?” she asks, the words tumbling out of her.  Her voice has an edge to it, but she keeps it hushed, just barely genial enough to keep Tom away.  “Or is it just me?”  _Is it always just me_? she wants to continue.  _Hasn’t it always been me?_

“Seems to be just… you,” Draco confirms.  He doesn’t look away from her this time.  “As soon as you came in here, it was like I didn’t have a choice."

Hermione barks out a laugh despite herself.  “Oh, _of course_ you didn’t,” she says, her throat going all tight again.  She doesn’t want to be there, anymore, with him.  “Give me a break, Draco.”

“So, it’s Draco now, then, is it?” He seems to smile, slightly, and it isn’t, for once, cruel.  In fact, it’s so clear in its vulnerable sincerity that Hermione almost wants to stand up and run out of the pub then and there. 

“That’s your _name_ ,” she counters, feeling caught.  “Still _Granger_ for me, though.  No matter how sorry you are, old habits die hard, hm?” She registers dimly that her voice is far louder than it had been before, and more clearly angry, but she doesn’t care.  No part of her cares, anymore, to settle back and absorb harm—a girl’s silence to maintain the peace for those around her.  No, she’d stopped doing that when they were all in hiding, and Ron had run off on them, and she had blamed herself for his delusion. 

She blinks, and the thought is gone.  Draco is watching her in that infuriating way he seems to have, like he knows exactly what she’s thinking even without Legilimency.  He’d done it in school, too, though when those thoughts come to the forefront of her mind, she stomps on them as best as she can.  Just as she had during school.  Quiet moments in the stacks where he would suddenly be there, silent as a ghost, and he’d meet her eye, and, for once, he wouldn’t say anything.  One time, even, she thought she caught him smiling in her general direction, but it could have been the low light filtering through the books wrong, and he was gone before she could even properly wonder about it. 

“Fine,” Draco says, tilting his head to the side, surveying her carefully.  His hair shifts loosely, falling in a greasy fan across his forehead.  “ _Hermione_.”

Hermione blinks stupidly at him, then scoffs and looks away, because she can’t do anything else for the odd, intrusive sort of flush that has bloomed across her cheeks.  _Butterbeer_ , she thinks faintly, though she hasn’t had a sip in nearly ten minutes.  “That wasn’t so hard,” she mutters finally, turning her eyes back to look at him. 

He shrugs.  “It is an odd name,” he says, his tone almost playful.  “Maybe I just had trouble pronouncing it up until now.” Hermione snorts, then throws her hand up to her mouth as if she’s uttered something horrific.  Draco’s smile only widens, and it’s genuine and positively strange.  And she finds herself, for the first time, not wanting to slap him, or hex him.  And perhaps that makes her want to run even more. 


	2. tide

The days can turn into a chasm when you don’t pay attention close enough.  One can tip over the edge and go flailing, and it becomes hard to stop after long enough, because there’s hardly anything to grip onto from the start, and after a point, you begin to fall even faster.  Like Alice tumbling into another world, there are wardrobes and scarves that float past, perhaps even, mockingly, a pocket watch or a calendar, but it seems futile, you’re plummeting, and it’s not Wonderland at the bottom, no, it’s precisely _nowhere_.  The tunnel downward does not end so easily as that.  You must find a way to get back to the _top_.  You _must_ grab something.

Hermione Granger has felt weightless, timeless, in this way since before the war ended, when she was folding up tents and drawing wards in the air and they were running, always running, all chests heaving and teary faces, promises of warm soup when they just _get there_ , wherever there may be, and falling into beds only to lie awake, bodies frantically tight under the covers that aren’t theirs, not at all like the ones they have at home.  It blends together, after a while, the choke of fear strangling the understanding of linear time right out of you.  And then it sticks. 

Now, Hermione can look at her watch and see the time, but not comprehend the difference between midnight and eight in the morning, or why it should matter.  She can glance at the calendar hanging over her bed and see that it’s Wednesday, but it means just as much as it had meant Tuesday—nothing.  It’s an absence, a missing bit of her body that she hasn’t bothered yet to recover.  It could still be in Malfoy Manor, buried beneath the brick and plaster of recent renovations, or maybe it’s in the Forest of Dean, obscured by debris and fossilized, panicky memories. 

So when she shows up to the Leaky Cauldron every night at one, two, three in the morning and sees that Draco is there too, has his knees tucked up in the corner booth, reading a book, wide awake, she wonders if he, too, experiences this piece that’s gone away.  She imagines he must, but she does not yet want to ask.  In truth, she hasn’t talked to him very much at all in the past couple of weeks.  She merely comes to his table and sits across from him, nursing her Butterbeers or her Firewhiskys or her own books, and it’s… good.  Surprisingly good.

“Hermione, it’s not polite to stare,” he says one night, glancing up at her over _A Practical Guide to Mythical Plants_.  She’s been calling him Draco since his trial, perhaps even in less guarded moments at school, but up until now it’s all been entirely in her own head.  Hearing _her_ name coming out of his mouth though, she feels, will never stop being strange, in theory or in practice.  He enunciates it so carefully every time he says it, like it’s warming charm, something comforting, and then follows it up almost immediately with something callous or snarky.  The juxtaposition throws her.  Sometimes, she almost wants to tell him to call her Granger again, but… no, she doesn’t, not really. 

She starts, pulls her hand away from her face and straightens primly in her chair.  She hadn’t realized she’d been watching him.  “Sorry,” she says, her voice coming out hoarse from its disuse, but he’s still waiting for something.  _Always_ seems like he’s waiting for something.  He’s shut the book now and set it on the table, discarded it, as if it’s the least interesting thing he’s encountered all day, although before now, the pleasant hums he’d been making every page turn or so would beg to differ.  She levels him with a glare.  “ _What_?”

Draco smiles the way he does now—softly, almost shy.  Like he’s trying it out for the first time, like it requires _just_ enough discipline to work out right.  “D’you want to go for a walk?” he asks, resting his hands on the table.  His fingernails are torn up, his knuckles are scabbed over.  She tries not to stare at them, wonder where the wounds came from, wonder if there’s more in places that she cannot see, wonder if those are worse.  He’s still wearing that ghastly cloak, after all, but he goes without the hood now, at least.  “I _feel_ like you need a bit of a walk.  You look…” He waves a vague hand toward her, shakes his head and chuckles.  “…full of thoughts.  I can practically feel them bouncing around inside your head.”

Hermione opens her mouth to respond.  Something defiant immediately comes roaring up her throat and she clamps her teeth down on it before it can tumble out, and Draco seems to see it happen, his lips twitching and his head tilting away from her as if concealing a laugh.  “Okay,” she manages, and stands abruptly from her seat, nearly knocking herself over in the process.  He looks back up at her, face suddenly serious as he’s tentatively reaching for his book, as if she could be joking and he shouldn’t move so quickly. 

“Okay,” he says, very quietly, and stands. 

Outside, it feels better, and they walk side by side, so as not to have to look at one another so much.  It’s less heavy this way.  And she’s always liked walking in the snow at night, when the world’s gone lilac and pillowy-silent.  It’s even nicer doing it with someone else. 

They make it nearly to Knockturn without talking at all, but it’s when they loop around and begin to approach Hermione’s apartment that she says, only because of her exhaustion and the lack of care it brings, “do you remember fourth year?” As soon as it’s come out of her, she realizes what she’s offered him, an opportunity to scoff and say _um, yes, Granger, I remember my fourth year of school, do_ you _?,_ but he doesn’t take it.  Instead, he stops walking, and she doesn’t notice until she’s a few paces ahead.  She turns. 

He’s stopped underneath a streetlamp, and he’s smiling, but it’s small, modest, and he’s trying to tuck it away into the collar of his coat.  It’s clear that he hasn’t _meant_ to smile.  It’s not one he’s practiced.  “What?” she asks, and is surprised to hear that her voice is tinged with laughter, even more surprised to feel it bubbling happily in her chest.  It feels so unfamiliar there, but not entirely unwelcome. 

Draco shakes his head, like he’s trying to knock that nuisance smile off his face.  Snow has begun to fall, and it floats gently into the spotlight around him, haloing his body with fluffy white static.  “Nothing, I—” He takes a few steps out of the light, toward where she stands, her hands shoved into her pockets, and the shadows return beneath his eyes almost tenfold in the new darkness, and he doesn’t look at her.  “I didn’t think you’d remember.” A whisper.  If it wasn’t so quiet outside, she wouldn’t have heard him.

“Of course I remember,” she says, and it’s indignant around a sleepy chuckle.  _Forget_ , her?  “You know who you’re talking to, surely?”

Draco doesn’t answer her, and it seems the smile has finally relinquished its stubborn hold.  He’s trudging back toward her now, his head bowed against the cold, or perhaps to hide his face.  “Why do you ask?” he inquires, in a tone meant to be casual but is entirely not so.  He’s directly beside her now and she doesn’t know whether they should start walking again or not, so she just continues to stand in the middle of the street to finish her thought. 

“I just…” She pauses.  She doesn’t quite know.  “Maybe to see if it was really you, like I’d thought.”

It had been a note slipped beneath one of her books, the swish of a cloak disappearing into the stacks just as she dropped back into her seat.  _Hermione— Try river sage_ in delicate, looping cursive so carefully neat that it promised the note had been written at least twice over before the final draft.  She could’ve been fooled into thinking it was someone she knew, just another well-meaning friend with more suggestions for Harry, if he hadn’t waited around to make sure she saw it, his blonde head just barely peeking out from within the shelves when she looked around to spot the sender.

When Draco doesn’t answer her, she starts to walk again.  He falls into step just behind her.  Snow crunches gently beneath their feet.  As they pass her apartment, Draco appears at her shoulder, points.  “I live there,” he says, then promptly drops his hand.  “Don’t know why I told you that,” he adds in a sullen voice, as if he feels stupid for saying it.

“Oh?” Hermione glances over at him, her even pace stuttering and slowing.  He lives _here_?  “Me too.” And then, Draco’s looking at her, all surprised but not saying anything, and they’re walking very slowly through the street, now, trading glances with the other. 

Out in the soft moonlight, he looks very different at the same time that he looks just as he _should_.  It’s how he exists in her own head: less severe, lurking nearby with a book cradled in his hands and his eyes on her in the flickering candlelight of the library, for once devoid of his cruelties, of his habit of carving caverns into her chest and tucking sharp objects there.  He looks, here, like someone she barely knows, someone she’s always wanted to meet.  Someone she wasn’t altogether sure really existed until now.  It’s surreal, and when he looks at her again, eyes curious, she flushes and speeds up again, hoping he hadn’t noticed that she’d very briefly left her body to stumble about in their past. 

“H-How, um, how do you like it, then?” she finds herself asking, her words dumb and suddenly stilted, and she’s sweating underneath her coat, despite the frigid winds still swirling around them.  They must look a sight, two people bundled up and walking stiffly side by side, as if they’d been told to go on a walk as a dare from friends. 

“Well, my neighbor plays the cello at all hours of the day and the bathroom is far smaller than I’m used to,” he replies, his drawl peeking out around his words just a little.  “But it’s…” He clears his throat. “… _cozy_.”

Hermione hears the cello player too, discordant songs hammering weakly at the walls while she’s trying to nap.  How close, then, is Draco’s room to hers?  And why is she thinking about it, wondering what he has decorating his walls or if he has any quilts on his bed or if he has a pet of some sort?  They’re approaching the Leaky again, and Hermione finds that she doesn’t want to return.  She wants to hear what Draco didn’t say about fourth year, even if she must stay out in the cold for it to happen. 

“Why did you—” she begins, but he’s already stopped walking again, had stopped before she’d opened her mouth.  She turns around to face him, only to see that he’s sat down at a nearby bench, and she, reluctantly eyeing the light dusting of snow on the seat, joins him.  When she drops down beside him, their arms touch, but she doesn’t make any effort to move away.  He’s warm, even through all his layers. 

“Hard to explain,” he says quietly, and this time he is looking at her as he speaks, making sure to tilt his head in just the right way to catch her elusive eyes, but she finds it hard to return the favor, ends up focusing almost entirely on his hands instead.  They’re lacking gloves of any sort and his bruised, pale fingers tangle about with one another in writhing anxiety.  She thinks maybe she should abandon this, tell him _nevermind_ , but then, his hands abruptly still.  She glances up to see that he’s looking away from her finally, to the snowy ground at their feet.  She watches him easily, now that he isn’t doing the same to her.  Finally, he mutters, “I _always_ saw you in the library, poring over all those herbology texts for Potter.  Just… by yourself.” His grey eyes flicker, then, “I wanted to help you.” They meet hers, catch her watching him again, and his words are so distinctly and perplexingly meaningful that she’s so stunned she doesn’t think to look away this time.  Doesn’t want to.  Snow continues to fall around them, but not a single flake seems to land on her.  She thinks, distantly, that someone must have cast a ward around them to keep them dry.  Had Draco done that, without her noticing?

“Thank you,” she whispers, and she reaches out to hold his once again frantic hands in both of hers.  She gazes down at them, rubs a careful finger against one of his scraped knuckles, and then looks up at him again.  His eyes are like looking into a cluttered bedroom.  She can tell, without asking, that he is immeasurably sad.  She knows, because she feels it too.  “For everything.  All of it.  _Thank_ you.”  She can feel tears forming in her eyes, but she doesn’t want to look away from him again, because the immensity of the gratitude now swelling in her chest needs to be received, and she needs to see him hearing it.  She’s been wanting to say it for so long: “You saved us.”

Draco’s hands clench in hers, and he turns away, but she’s already caught the sight of his face crumbling.  Maybe if they were still in school, she would’ve rejoiced.  She’s made Draco Malfoy cry.  As she sits there holding his hands, though, and watching his shoulders tremble, hearing the sobs she knows he must want so desperately to hide from her, she can’t ever imagine a time where that sort of thing could have made her happy.  Not anymore. 

* * *

 

They carry on, after that, and they don’t talk much, but Draco is inexplicably _warmer_.  He waves to her whenever she enters the Leaky, offering up a wide smile and sometimes sliding a book across the table that he thinks she’d like, and usually she does, and she reads it all there in the pub and hands it back to him at the end of their night.  They never say anything about it, and sometimes he returns the next day with a new book for her.  Sometimes not. 

She doesn’t realize how strange it is, not until Harry drops by her apartment one morning unannounced, startling her right out of bed and onto the floor, and the first thing she says when he enters her room, looking in her tired vision like a blurry and faceless stranger, is “ _Draco_?”, because that’s the only person she feels it could be.  Harry reels back through the doorway and yells something indecipherable but certainly angry, and only then does Hermione fully awaken and sit up on the floor. 

When Harry steps back into the bedroom, Hermione can see, now, that his brows are furrowed, his glasses somehow askew just from his shock.  He’s wearing a rather large sweater, looking like he’s just rolled out of his own bed.  “What did you call me?” he sputters, one hand gripping the doorway. 

“I believe I called you _Draco_ ,” Hermione says evenly, reaching up onto the bed to pull herself up to standing.  The fall has knocked most of the residual sleepiness from her body.  “Which was a mistake, my apologies.  You’re far more dashing.” She begins to make her bed, very slowly and deliberately so as to properly annoy him. 

Harry rolls his eyes and shoves his hands into his pockets.  “That’s not the point.”

She stops what she’s doing and turns to face him.  This is beginning to irritate her in the way it had during school, Harry’s dogged hatred, though back then, she’d played into it, as well, and it was less distracting because of that.  Now, however. 

“What _is_ the point, then, Harry?” she asks coldly, and when he only arches an eyebrow and doesn’t answer, she returns to her bed-making.  “Why are you here, anyway?  I usually—” She pauses, feeling like the next part of the sentence is far too sad to actually utter aloud but, well, “—sleep during the day.”

Harry looks unfazed by it, though.  “Was just dropping by to see if you wanted to go out, do something,” he says, his voice far quieter now, lacking any defiance.  “ _Draco_ , though?”

Hermione tucks the last corner of her quilt neatly away and turns toward him.  “Yes, we’ve been…” Been what? “…hanging out, I think.”

Harry nods slowly, as if he’s not properly comprehending any of this, or doesn’t want to.  “And… why would he be in your apartment, then?” he asks, his voice lifting just imperceptibly higher. 

“He—well, he _wouldn’t_ , it’s… it’s nothing like that, Harry. _Merlin_.” She huffs out a sort of nervous laugh and turns away from him, but her bed is made, and she has nothing else to do now but leave the room, which requires going through Harry, which requires looking at him, so she does.  She can’t tell if he’s trying to frown or smile.  Maybe it’s a bit of a grimace, even.  But he doesn’t say anything, just steps out of her bedroom. 

“You probably don’t want to hear how worried this all makes me,” he says as he drops down onto her living room couch and reaches for the television remote, “so I won’t tell you.” The TV buzzes to life and he begins idly flipping through channels.  She marches toward the kitchen, ignoring him.  She isn’t used to having anyone here, even Harry, so she slams a few cupboards rather aimlessly before figuring she should get some tea going.  She hasn’t been up this early for a long while and it’s really showing. 

Knowing Harry’s ‘disinterest’ won’t last, she peeks into the living room as the kettle is boiling.  He’s watching a riveting documentary on bird migration, and she’d bet at least ten Galleons that he isn’t paying the least bit of attention to it.  “It’s been months, Harry,” she says despite herself.  She feels like she’s pitching a S.P.E.W. speech to the Hogwarts house elves again, shouting pointlessly into the unagreeable void, but she needs to say it.  If not for him, then to finally tell herself, confirm it aloud for the first time.  “He’s...” she shrugs, “different.”

This gets Harry to turn around.  He drapes himself over the back of the couch, arms dangling comically, and stares at her.  She can’t tell if he’s mad or amused or neither, but he’s a sight.  She hasn’t properly seen him outside of her infrequent fire calls.  She’s missed him, and his stupid hair, and his kind eyes.  After a long moment of staring at one another, the kettle screams, and she departs into the kitchen to lift it off the burner.  When she returns, Harry is in the same spot, but he’s smiling.  He shrugs. 

“Fine.  I believe you,” he says simply, and it sinks into her stomach like a bite of warm pumpkin pie would.  It glows brightly there, introduces light into some of the dark places she’s missed, and she grins at him from the kitchen doorway, all toothy and delightful.  “I hope he… helps.”  He pauses for a yawn, then tilts his head thoughtfully to the side.  “And maybe you can help him.”

And she hopes Harry is right, hopes with so much of her that she feels staggered by it.  She returns to the kitchen to finish their tea, still smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i literally just made 'river sage' up to have something to write the note about lol


	3. sweet

Hermione doesn't quite know how it happened, but she's found herself, on one typically-average Tuesday night, letting Draco Malfoy into her apartment, graciously, and in a pale pink dress that she'd debated wearing for nearly two and a half hours prior.  It's a casual sort of dress, to be fair, something comfortable and lightweight with short sleeves and a reasonably high collar, but she still feels mortified when she opens the door to see that Draco is only wearing a sweater and a pair of jeans.  If their opposing choices of clothing indicate anything, it's that she'd interpreted this as a sort of date and he certainly had _not_ , but still, he smiles as soon as he sees her, brightly.  If it had been a couple of months prior, she would have called it a distinctly un-Malfoy smile, but now she knows that it is absolutely his, and she smiles back without having to dwell on it anymore. 

“Hi,” she says stupidly, before realizing that she should very well let him in so that she can reasonably go bustle about the kitchen in an effort to hide her blushing face.  _Blushing_ , why?  She steps out of his way and gestures for him to come in with far too grand a gesture, then plasters her arm determinedly to her side so that she can't do it again. 

“Hermione,” Draco says in his cordial way, though he seems to be suppressing a laugh as he does it, stepping past her and looking all around.  She’s hung twinkly lights all over the place, and they give the living room a soft (read: far too romantic) glow.  With every passing second, she grows more and more embarrassed.  She’s really gone above and beyond for what is just a movie night between friends.  But hasn't she always gone above and beyond with everything?  Surely, Draco knows that.  Surely, he won't get any ideas. 

“Um,” Hermione begins, stepping slowly backwards toward the kitchen.  “You can—uh, sit.” She points toward the couch and he offers her an exaggerated sort of nod, watching her in the low light with a grin, his arms clasped behind his back, and he looks entirely too amused for his own good.  “I’m… going to get some snacks.  For us.  To eat.” She swallows and spins around, practically running to the kitchen. 

Hermione has no idea why she's feeling so giddy.  Perhaps she hasn't slept enough, and is becoming manic in her exhaustion?  Or she's simply excited to have made a new friend and kept him long enough to feel comfortable inviting him into her home?  _Or_ … prompts a nagging voice inside her head.  She huffs a sigh and goes about making popcorn, shaking her head as she goes.  _No.  No, no, no._

“So, what are we watching?” Draco's voice alights from nowhere, and Hermione realizes with a start that he's just suddenly _there_ right next to her, leaning leisurely against the doorway to the kitchen.  She stares at him a moment, captivated by how greasy his hair, for once, _doesn't_ look, and how he very well may have gotten a haircut since the last time she’s seen him.  He looks almost healthy.  He certainly looks  _good_. 

“When did you get there?” she asks after she remembers to breathe, still frozen with her arm reaching into an overhead cupboard.  Draco raises his eyebrows and she remembers herself long enough to finish the action, snatching the popcorn packet and slamming the cupboard door shut with far too much force. 

“Just now.  I’m very quick and quiet.  How I got to be such an efficient prefect.” He smiles, stepping into the kitchen.  Oh, no.  She hadn't planned on that.  She’d expected him to remain sequestered in the other room, _away_ from her.  “You’ve not answered my question.”

“Huhg?” Hermione asks intelligently. 

“What movie are we watching?” he repeats, softer this time.  

She still, occasionally, feels like he'll snap at her, or call her a name, especially in moments like this, where she says something nonsensical, or makes herself out to be a fool, but he always seems to surprise her by being purposefully kind in the face of it.  Agonizingly patient. 

She blinks, and then her mouth falls open before she knows what's happening: “Oh—um, well, I figured we would go through them all together, because I don’t quite know your tastes, I have some VHS tapes—oh, you probably don’t know what those are, little boxes with the pictures and whatnot in them? You’ll see—I have a _lot_ of those actually, but—” Draco holds up a hand, laughing.  No matter how often he does it, it's still strange, seeing him laugh, and not entirely at her.  Not cruelly, at least.  It's... richer, now, full of a spirit that he either didn’t have in school, or had hidden away. 

“Alright, I’ll leave you to it, then,” he says, before, finally, departing from the kitchen.  Her shoulders drain of tension and, though she hadn’t noticed it at all before, she releases the iron grip she has on the popcorn.  She tears the plastic away like a wild beast and throws it into the microwave. 

Once she finally wrangles together all their snacks onto a tray, including the pesky popcorn, she walks back into the living room to see Draco lounging across the sofa, his arm thrown over his eyes.  She panics for a moment, looking to his feet, but it seems he has already taken off his shoes and laid them near the door.  She should have known better, probably, considering he’d grown up in that monstrosity of a manor.  He certainly knows not to put his shoes on someone else’s sofa.

“I’ve managed to get us food without maiming myself in the process, if you can believe it,” she jokes, as she deposits the tray onto her coffee table, hoping that maybe poking fun at her own bizarre behavior will make it feel less embarrassing to have to think about.  It doesn't, especially not when Draco pulls his arm away from his face and smirks up at her. 

“Flustered you, did I?” he asks, sitting up.  He watches her expectantly for an answer, his pale eyes catching in the dots of multi-colored light around them. 

Hermione is about to spin around and preoccupy herself with feverishly digging through her movie collection to avoid the question, but then she shrugs instead, and says, rather truthfully, “I guess so.  It was very odd.” She sighs and drops down onto the couch next to him, resting her hands in her lap.  She looks over at him to see that he's still staring at the space where she’d been standing, the sureness of his expression fading fast.  “What’s wrong?” she asks, frowning at him.  He shakes his head, turning to look at her. 

 _Flustered_ doesn't quite feel like the right word, anymore.  Hermione itches to stand up and turn the harsh overhead lights on, so Draco's face doesn't look so soft in the half-darkness, but she feels pinned to the couch, staring at Draco staring at her.  Finally, he clears his throat and a ghost of a smile dances across his lips. 

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says quietly.  Then, “pretty dress.” He inclines his head toward her. 

“Oh,” she says, reaching to smooth out the skirt against her legs, finally able to preoccupy herself with something.  “Thank you.”

“So,” he begins, looking away from her to the television.  “Shall we get on with it?”

She blinks dumbly, then follows his gaze and laughs.  “Um, yes.” She stands and hurries over to the shelves beside the TV.  She lets her fingers run lightly along the VHS tapes.  “Did you want anything in particular?” she asks, her fingers briefly pausing over a familiar favorite of hers— _Alice in Wonderland_. 

“No,” Draco says. “But it seems like you do.”

Hermione smiles and plucks the tape off of the shelf.  She slides it carefully out of its sleeve, her eyes taking in the weathered cover, the softened edges.  “It’s a cartoon,” she explains quietly, kneeling to put the movie in.  "An animation, with talking flowers and invisible cats." Warmth spreads to her fingertips as she lovingly presses the tape into the slot and watches it gently tuck itself away.  “About a girl who’s fallen into a strange new world.”

There's a beat of silence, and she feels almost like she's said too much. 

“Like you,” Draco says quietly, in the intonations of someone who understands completely, and she turns to look at him, her finger hovering over the ‘play’ button.  He smiles at her, and perhaps it is just then that the pieces fit together in her chest, nuzzle into one another with their perfectly matching corners, but she still doesn't know it.  Not entirely.

“Yes,” she says softly, allowing a smile of her own, and she presses play.  

* * *

 

At some point during the film, Hermione falls asleep, gently whispering lines of dialogue like a half-remembered prayer and sliding further and further toward Draco until she is snuggled up entirely against him.  He wakes her just as Alice comes to beneath the tree, the world she'd grown so used to having disappeared.

“Oh, no,” Hermione murmurs, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.  She blinks blearily up at Draco without moving from his shoulder; she hasn’t yet realized how close they are.  He still has his hand resting on her arm from waking her.  “I’m _so_ sorry.”

Draco chuckles, and the sound rumbles gently against her.  “You don’t have to apologize,” he says.  “I enjoyed it even better with your snoring in the background.”

“I do _not_ snore,” she insists at once, indignant.  She tilts her face away from him to fix him with a severe look, though the corners of her mouth are trembling up into a helpless smile.  He watches her without saying anything, his face still looking edgeless and vulnerable in the low light, and if someone were to ask her after the fact, she wouldn’t know who kissed who first, only that when it happened, it felt like _everything_. 

They come together like an inevitable collision, and it seems, for her, like so many things at once, she can hardly begin to organize it all.  It is as if millions of soft vines are sprouting up throughout her body and twisting around her bones, packing every empty space in her with warmth and vitality.  She reaches up for his face and holds it carefully in her hands, and she thinks of the library, and all the times she'd caught his form flitting away into the stacks and _known_ it was him, or the uncertain looks he’d darted her in the Great Hall.  Him now, too, the cautious joy he sometimes allowed her to see when he read something he liked in a book.  And even that day when he'd spat his hate at her and her fist had connected with his cheek; the raw look of regret that had flashed across his face just before he ran.  

She kisses him until they are both desperately breathless and reaching for one another, and only when her hand dips under his sweater to touch the warm skin beneath does she abruptly stop and pull away. 

Draco looks at her now no differently than if she’d just told him a bit about the weather, though his chest is heaving, and his hair is askew, and Hermione realizes, then, that they have both been needing this for such a long time that it feels wildly normal, unsurprising, now that they've finally done it.  He looks no different because he's always looked at her as if they’d just kissed the life out of one another. 

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while, I think,” he says, after a long moment of staring. 

“Me too,” she whispers. 

And for the first time in a long time, she just can't stop grinning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long, here's the last chapter!! this was never meant to be a super long fic, i just wanted it to be a sweet lil three or four chapter long cute thing :~) hope u like


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